Rethinking Prostitution : feminism, sex and the self

Prostitution is a difficult issue, particularly for feminists. Are prostitutes victims of exploitation or the most honest of women? Are clients perverts or just acting instinctively? Should prostitution be eliminated or supported? This book examines these contemporary questions and offers a way of thinking about the issues, which does not rely on these inappropriate and often ineffectual options. Repositioning the institution and its main players outside the confines of the prostitution debate offers new and exciting ways of thinking and acting for all those interested in moving this discussion into the twenty-first century.

Does feminism spoil girls? Explanations for official rises in female delinquency

Official rates of female delinquency have been rising steadily in countries such as Australia, England, Canada and the United States since the 1960s. They have also generally been rising at a rate faster than that for boys. As yet there is little consensus about the reasons for these rises or even whether such rate rises reflect any real increase in female delinquency at all. Against this backdrop of rising official crimes rates for young women, this article revisits the various criminological explanations for these trends.

Book review: Leaky Bodies and Boundaries. Feminism, Post-modernism and (Bio)ethics. Shildrick, M. (1997)

This thoughtful book is a much needed contribution to feminist ethics that is brimming with detailed and insightful analyses of the positioning of women in contemporary health care and particularly in relation to new reproductive technologies (NRTs). The clearly written and structured chapters provide accessible points to modern ethics, post-modernism, and feminist ethics. Margrit Shildrick takes on these areas with authority and vigour, building an argument for women to enter the relations of reproduction on terms more expressive of feminine desire...

Feminism and Global Justice

This book attempts to persuade a new generation of scholars, criminologists, activists, and policy makers sympathetic to the quest for global justice to open the envelope, to step out of their comfort zones and typical frames of analysis to gaze at a world full of injustice against the female sex, much of it systemic, linked to culture, custom and religion. In some instances the sources of these injustices intersect with those that produce global inequality, imperialism and racism. This book also investigates circumstances where the globalising forces cultivate male on male violence in the anomic spaces of supercapitalism – the border zones of Mexico and the United States, and the frontier mining communities in the Australian desert. However systemic gendered injustices, such as forced marriage of child female brides, sati the cremation of widows, genital cutting, honour crimes, rape and domestic violence against women, are forms of violence only experienced by the female sex. The book does not shirk away from female violence either. Carrington argues that if feminism wants to have a voice in the public, cultural, political and criminological debates about heightened, albeit often exaggerated, social concerns about growing female violence and engagement in terrorism, then new directions in theorising female violence are required. Feminist silences about the violent crimes, atrocities and acts of terrorism committed by the female sex leave anti-feminist explanations uncontested. This allows a discursive space for feminist backlash ideologues to flourish. This book contests those ideologies to offer counter explanations for the rise in female violence and female terrorism, in a global context where systemic gendered violence against women is alarming and entrenched. The world needs feminism to take hold across the globe, now more than ever.

We need to talk : feminism and food (GOMA Harvest Picnic)

This collaborative, participatory work by feminist collective LEVEL took place at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) as part of the official program of activities surrounding the exhibition 'Harvest', 2014. It took the form of a public picnic, where women and their friends were invited to share cooking recipes while also discussing the possible recipe for a gender revolution. Groups discussed their ideas, before a public reading of potential 'ingredients' and 'methods' outside the museum on the Maiwar Green.